Gravity of Thinking

 

 

Gravity of Thinking

On the deck of my yacht we are sitting

On the subject of gravity we are chatting

The moon is behind the earth and the sun

Well it's behind the clouds, the sea we sit on

An obedient servant to both masters at once

The sea… she has not the senses nor the will

Yet her tides rise and fall as celestial compel

 

Aristotle thought and taught, we bought obediently

It was simply water’s nature we said repeatedly

For centuries it was the truth the reality we lived by

Until a chap named Newton, upon science he relied

We lay our claims to gravity as we are now taught

Just say the word gravity and we know and think naught

To give a thought to what it is we actually know

 

The first of great unifications of physics founded in math

 Taught in school placed on a test for a grade, who’d ask

Does the knowing of celestial bodies come with a big bang

For naught to ask is Its source a primevil atom, t’s this strange

Its source…source are we speaking of God where faith drives

Man to THINK, bring thought into  his own Being and contrive

Gods will, choosing to evolve distinguishing truth from knowing

Einstein’s God

 

Einstein’s God

By Krista Tippett

 

Setting the scene:

At any cocktail party where the subject of science-v-religion comes up, it starts from the premise that there actually is a rivalry.  No doubt in the 20^th century, backed by our public schools, cemented in the Supreme Court cases highlighted in 1948 McCollum-v- Board of Education ruling, science prevailed.   The collective conscious of our modern generations leans heavily towards science.  Come the year of our lord 2000 the scales tilts back.  Was that argument really about funding?  Lost is the mere fact that the premier scientists over time never meant for this schism to exist.  Specifically, Darwin!!!   

In 2020 the year of the great pandemic in a politically charged society, one is rebuked for not listening to the voice of science.  A voice that zooms in on the species called CoV-2 whose sole desire is to survive on this earth.  Sounds like Darwin???  But then where is the legal argument for the Covid species to live????  There is a fittest species is there not?  Consensus at that party holds that science prevails until an illuminated chap quips anecdotally its God’s will to be culling the herd.  “let old people die as 95% of medical is spent in the last five years of life;” as he/they all sip their beverage and laugh it off behind their masks. 

If there is any wisdom in the Old Testament, it’s not hard to find a history of ‘plagues’ that brings a society to a higher level of religious consciousness in fear of death.  Plagues that mysteriously ran their course evolved to plagues resolved through the intervention of man’s science; the will to turn and fight the intruder on our species.  This is my introduction to Krista Tippett’s book Einstein’s God. 

The book itself:

Tippett argues contrary to casual dinner party banter, science and God sit together on the throne of the mind our great scientists and philosophers.  Her book provides ten chapters, poetically akin to ten commandments, illustrates through interviews with prolific gatekeepers of science the harmony with religion present in their work.  While the scientists’ pursuit was a phenomenon of nature, explained through math and logic to a conclusion, their ‘Will’ came from faith in the unknown.  Today let’s call it the universe as an agreed upon proxy for God.  What was not known on the embarkment of their quest was the answer.  Faith nourished them in their quest.  Faith and hope, hallmarks of religion, stand in the dark periphery leaving their breakthroughs in the light.  Oddly enough a dynamic where science being the louder voice that causes religion to be undervalued to the extent that today’s Western world seeks to ban it from State run schools.

Let’s take a closer look at the landmarks of Tippett’s book, her overarching themes and how they tie together.  It starts with the title and her recognition of Einstein’s reverence for the beauty of nature and thought.  Who would band Nature and Thought one train of thought… Tippett.  In this modern world where thought is a feature of the data processing brain, who would look in to the biology of spirit of the nether world….Tippett.  Who in today’s world would tie the brains thinking to the heart as Tippet does in her discourse Mehmet Oz.  I could tease you through the book but that would be a dis-service to all her work.  So I’ll take a moment in her chapter on Darwin.

It seems Darwin’s survival of the fittest and his Origin of Species planted in the minds of legislators and educators…but rather men endeavor the endless progress or proficiency in both leaves todays populist voice trampling over not only religion but Darwin as well.  Tippett takes the reader down a different path in thinking…one that may on the surface be logical but comes from the heart of Darwin’s being. At its core Darwin writes:

               “let no man think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, …but rather let men progress or proficience in both”.  Darwin is humbled by the laws of nature.  Darwin did not challenge the idea of God as the source of all being.  But he did reject the idea of a God minutely implicated in every flaw, injustice, or catastrophe.

My views:

On the heals of what is written above, I will ally with Tippett.  Her book is spot on in drawing out the true Darwin.  Making my/our case, I bring East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.  It was very popular in the same generation as McCollum-v- Board of Education.  Why?  From that book was a theme that comes from the Jewish faith Timshel… Thou Mayest.  God gave one species the ability of complex thought and more importantly the ability to CHOOSE!  Tippett’s book illuminates the voice of scientist, who rely on faith in that very point.  Her book will cause you to take a second and deeper look at your own thinking.  Read it. 

Hurricane - Bob Dylan

 In 1975 Racism was roaring in an era without live video and social medial  We had to count on movements and fund raisers.  The news papers focused on Dylan and his his band and less on the tragic  black man falsely accused.    His fundraiser raised a mere $100,000 for Hurricane's defense.   He never played it again at concerts because it was too long  for his majority white audiences and NOT ENTERTAINING at concerts.  White people were not interested then.  

This year of 2020 saw the George Floyd, not a boxing prize fighter but a common criminal with a dubious past raises over $6M.  He was surely a victim of police brutality.  There is a lot to the story, Today white people cringe to be accused of white privilege.  To all those with lp albums, pull out your Dylan vinyl, dust it off and set down the needle.  Its a great beat in classic Dylan style.  Below are the words, in case they never set in on you then;   what's different?  As yourself a few questions:

1. What is white privilege?

2.  Is it a matter of timing, measured by events not ticks on a clock?

3,  Have we evolved?

4.  Is BLM making a difference?

5.  Are black people at large making a difference?  

6.  Is there a collection of other social injustice movements coming to a peak?

7.  Are black people at large behaving like the citizens they want to be treated like (Rebecca Solnit), Whose Story is This)?

8.  In Solint's book Hope in the Dark about activism, is BLM now on center stage and in the light working for the greater good?

9.  Visit On Being  On Being with Krista Tippett - The On Being Project  Listen to Krista Tippetts' recent interviews ask yourself: is your thinking from the heart changing?

10.  Anything else?

Hurricane

[Verse 1]

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, “My God, they killed them all!”

[Hook]
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[Verse 2]
Three bodies lyin' there
Does Patty see
And another man named Bello
Moving around mysteriously
“I didn’t do it,” he says
And he throws up his hands
“I was only robbin' the register
I hope you understand

[Verse 3]
I saw them leaving,” he says, and he stops
“One of us had better call up the cops”
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene
With their red lights flashin'
In the hot New Jersey night

[Verse 4]
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin' around
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down

[Verse 5]
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Paterson that’s just the way things go
If you’re black
You might as well not show up on the street
Unless you want to draw the heat

[Verse 6]
Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the cops
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowling around
He said, “I saw two men running out
They looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates”

[Verse 7]
And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head
Cop said, “Wait a minute, boys, this one’s not dead”
So they took him to the infirmary
And though this man could hardly see
They told him that he could identify the guilty men

[Verse 8]
Four in the morning and they haul Rubin in
They take him to the hospital and they brought him upstairs
The wounded man looks up through his one dying eye
Says, “Why did you bring him in here for?
He ain't the guy!”

[Hook]
Here’s the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[Verse 9]
Four months later, the ghettos are in flame
Rubin’s in South America, fighting for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley’s still in the robbery game
And the cops are putting the screws to him
Lookin' for somebody to blame

[Verse 10]
“Remember that murder that happened in a bar?”
“Remember you said you saw the getaway car?”
“You think you’d like to play ball with the law?”
“Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw
Running that night?”
“Don’t forget that you are white”

[Verse 11]
Arthur Dexter Bradley said, “I’m really not sure”
The cops said, “A poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job
And we’re talking to your friend Bello
Now you don’t want to have to go back to jail
Be a nice fellow

[Verse 12]
You’ll be doing society a favor
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder
On him
He ain’t no Gentleman Jim”

[Verse 13]
Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
"It’s my work", he’d say, "and I do it for pay
And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way"

[Verse 14]
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man
Into a mouse

[Verse 15]
All of Rubin’s cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus
He never had a chance
The judge made Rubin’s witnesses
Drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched
He was a revolutionary bum

[Verse 16]
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one
Who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed

[Verse 17]
Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder “one,”
Guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride

[Verse 18]
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed
To live in a land
Where justice is a game

[Verse 19]
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink Martinis
And watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha
In a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell

[Outro]
Yes that’s the story of the Hurricane
But it won’t be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

Men In Black

 Men In Black

By Mark Levin

These days of 2005 are filled with charged discussion on Supreme Court nominations and Justice nominations at lower levels as well. I’ve read a few books on justice in my past; I picked this book up as a vacation reader while on the beach at Bama & Bampa’s place. It is a recent publication by an author with credentials in law and a protagonist for the Justice of constitutionalist bent, which leaves him with a rightward lean. However, please don’t let the cover or his reputation dissuade you form an easy read through judicial history. He makes a case for judicial reform and cites a trail of inept judges (for many reasons) and a history of cases, whether left or right outcome, as demonstrable evidence to put judicial activism in check.

The basic premise whereby a judicial ruling is based on the practical outcome of events as opposed to strict interpretation of our Constitution, as amended are put in an alarming context when the author makes apparent that justices are appointed for life. My current views of recent events found myself comparing ‘men in black” to the “unguided hands” vested in the mullahs of Iran. Each can overturn the powers of elected government and thwart the will of the people that government represents.

Levin describes a progressive process that began in the Marbury ruling of 1803 and has been downhill ever since. He describes an orchestrated process that includes activist groups propelling our represented government to appoint men with a presumed bias; albeit historically not so, pre or post appointment. I include the post fact because Levin demonstrates where constitutionalist judges evolve to activist decisions over time due to pressure from activists inside the beltway. In that evolutionary process Levin demonstrates the word tools judges use to stretch a new meaning or direction of the constitution. And finally Levin demonstrates where agendas of activist groups bring cases to court in a strategic way to push our democratic process further down that slippery slope.

The book is a challenge to read because it brings up current cases whereby the casual reader would find personal bias of an example case to interfere with the position being put forth by the author. In my opinion, we are by human nature easily swayed into a train of thought that would have an influence on the outcome of a person’s fate as opposed to being disciplined to our mandates of our Constitution. There are some events where a decision doesn’t even belong in our Courts. Yet the precedence set in Marbury 1803 decision allows for judicial review of democratic process to put elected decision makers in check, leaving democratic decisions vulnerable the human nature of a Supreme Arbitrator. This is common when activism looses at the ballot box. And these “Justices” often fall prey to that same instinct. Righting the wrongs of the world as “they see it.”

I recommend this book only to give today’s left or right a grounding point. While the book’s cover and introduction do not imply this I feel Levin provided enough balance to put the reader in the center. His call is not for any political agenda, but for reform in the judicial process with regard to appointments of judges. It is only a call with a couple shallow ideas as a way forward. The side affect from reading select cases leads the reader to pause and think…. could I ever be a good juror? The Murphy family is well aware of what liberties can diminish when activist agendas draw our politicians and our courts in on issues they do not belong in. Joe, I thought of you when I turned the last page. Indeed we are not fixing a social problem at your expense. How do we fix this?

Intimacy of Our Love

 

Intimacy of Our Love

 

As a flame of the fire in a hearth

Consumes the beats in my heart

Your Being our being now surrounds

My soul our souls a halo of light drowned

In interwoven imaginations and dreams

Organs coursing blood bursting the seems

Intertangled our bodies skin soaked in passion

Of Love and lust testing boundaries of

Our intimacy’s fragile fragrance of love

The flower blossoms nature in full bloom

 

 

Zara Yacob - Rationality of the Human Heart

 

Zara Yacob

Rationality of the Human Heart

By Teodros Kiros

 

This book, while using Zara Yacob as the prime mover in Ethiopian modern philosophy, makes an argument that thought comes in the form of prayer from the heart.  Kiros begins with a contrast of Yacob (1399 – 1468) and Descartes (1598 – 1650) demonstrating mind-body philosophy.  One hundred years apart in time yet they have much in common yet contrast on this fundamental point:

Zara Yacob wrote: The soul is endowed with an intelligence … God created us intelligent so that we meditate (pray) on his greatness.

Rene Descartes wrote:  thus there remains only the idea of God. I must consider whether there is anything in this idea that would not have originated from me.

The departure exists in who/what is at the center.  Descartes finds it to be man, “I think therefore I am” making man’s outer world man made.  Yacob finds God at the center of intelligence and therefore not man made.  Yacob looks at man-made as the protagonist of customs and tradition of which he despises.  According to Yacob all thought requires an inquiry through prayer to God.  It is God’s answer that bring upon each man his own intelligence for which to navigate the outer world. 

Rationality for Zara Yacob is an activity of the human heart blessed by moral intelligence that is given to all human beings, should they choose to make use of this extraordinary gift.  Having a gift and actually using it are of course two different things, but for those who would like to do the morally right thing, the heart is ready to help them perform the important task of performing in a morally worthy manner.  Such individuals do not have to go beyond consulting their heart when they agonize over their decisions, over their choices and over their dreams of seeking to be exceptional human beings.

Zara Yacob was the first of philosophers to reconfigure rationality, by reordering the relationship between the brain and the heart.  The brain for him is a processing machine and nothing more than that.  The heart is the home of thought.  The brain’s function is not the production of thought, as the rationality of Descartes assumed.  The production of thought is an activity of the heart.  However, the heart does not do this alone.  The task is too overwhelming for the heart.  There is another power which aids the heart to perform this function.  Through meditative prayer the transcendent responds to the hearts desire to communicate and defend the truth.  The heart desires, and the force inside it, discloses during intense moments of searching (Hassa) and meditating (Hatata).  The thinking heart pressured by the pangs of existence, responding to injustices in the world, cries out for help, and realizing its contingency, and the transcendent responds with generous action.

In my interpretation and blue-collar comment:  the brain is a data processer and the heart (desire) is the AI modern computer science is all excited about.  I am old enough to remember the transcendental meditation craze of the 1970’s.  Society at large lost our way once again and went back to books, the web, and science breakthroughs.  What is intelligence if it does not have a moral conscience.  I will leave you with that to think about as you decide to pick up this book and read it.  Perhaps we can discuss what is at the heart of the matter.

 

I googled  “heart home of thought” and got a hit:  The Human Heart Has a Mind of Its Own, Scientists Find - Learning Mind (learning-mind.com).  Krista Tippett, author of Einstein’s God would be happy.

Thx For Holding My Hand

 

Thx For Holding My Hand

Alone on the foredeck staring into the night

Wind in my face, sails leveraging her energy

The wind that carries us all through life

Temporally alone, yet spiritually one with

Another; a goddess of mythic energy

Cosmically stars twinkling, conversing on a black sky

The siren of her being, extends her hand              

A sage with wind and current she sees

 

From my darkness she draws me by my hand

Onto a lighted path, she gently whispers

Softly float her words from horizons beyond thought

Is it the song in her voice; her speaking, her advice or

Is it in her listening with purpose filled eyes

She knows its her turn to hold my hand

With patient grace she steadies my footing

To give is to receive an unwavering gratitude

From One soul to another please accept my Thx

Phantom Lover

 Phantom Lover

 

A phantom entered the room where we were gathered

Me, myself, and I that made a foursome yet the stranger

Like lilies in a field t’was was a breath of fresh air.

Filling the room even further my children joined

Conversing on the ebb and flow of our daily lives

Conversation knitting a social bond, a sense of family

 

As the glasses are drained, the evening turns to night

We each say good night, I love you, and retire to chambers

Asking from my pillow What’s inside that expression of love?

Why is it I only hear those words from my children

Alone I gradually become aware the phantom followed me

 

She introduced herself, “hi I’m loneliness’ sister, lets chat”

“I’m your phantom lover where the mystery lay

Not in the word phantom but found in the word love”

“You do know your children love you, they said so”

“Yeah but as the patriarch of the family that comes

In the wake of tradition and graciousness for my charity”

But you my friend on the pillow please stop thinking

Start simply Being who you are as you are…breathe

 

Know that you are yourself by yourself and We are all

Connected not by rules of social norms but in our souls

There is no earthly bond, rather an unconditional love allowing

Us to be with each other doing nothing but Being with each other

Not common among men yet always witnessed by God

There is no heart, no mind, just connection at the Soul Bone

Facing each other is standing in front our own soul’s mirror

As I look at you and you look at me, we find each other

Phantoms inside bodies navigating the phenomena of life

 

This Fire We Must Walk Through

 

This Fire We Must Walk Through

 

Tested is the sword after fire stoked for hardening

The clanging of the blacksmiths hammer in rhythm

A soul’s temperament feels the fire through its lives

Notes of a song on a scale a song marked in time

Through a trial of wills in his hand his sword

 

Tested is the mind in and elevated flame

Searching for meaning tempered by doubt

Where mind is on fire the soul is adrift

On a sea of testimony shrouded in a mist

He writes letter to no one in his hand his pen

 

Life is a journey with joys and perils on the path

God’s destines; dilemmas through love and wrath

Walking through fire requires mettle of soul’s

Acquaintance with a balanced heart and mind

Warming by the flame of a fire; a body retires

Hope in the Dark

 

Hope in the Dark

By Rebecca Solnit

 

Rebecca Solnit is first and foremost an Activist.  This book is a cross section of world issues where she has played the role of Activist and her philosophic approach to what it is to be an activist.  She would say it this way:  if there is something going on in your life, weather it is around the block or around the world, that does not fit your moral standards do something about it.  She goes on to say if the issues look hopeless, know there are likely thousands of people on the dark edges, looking at the same thing.  Speak out, eventually the voice from the edges will arrive on the center stage. 

Yin/Yang are my words.  Rebecca says it this way.  This 21st century is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen.  It has also been a nightmarish time.  Full engagement requires the ability to see both.  In my words, the phrase ‘strange bedfellows’ comes to mind.  I provide two examples. 

·       First are my words.   I cite Trump who has been called a Populist, appealing to an outsider’s voice [drain the swamp] in his political role as POTUS.  Many news agencies cry the dangers of a populist leader not just in the USA but around the world.  The implication is the “populist” being revolutionary may be a bit untamed.  Yet the mere word popular, suggests the people like him and his revolutionary ideas.  You could call him an activist, a term usually associated by the Left here in America.    

·       Second, Rebecca cites ‘Silicon Valley as a global power center that has eliminated and automated countless jobs enhancing economic inequality; it has produced new elites and monstrous corporations from Amazon with its attack on publishing, authors and working conditions, to Google which is attempting to build global information monopoly in myriad arenas and in the process amassing terrifying powers including the powers that comes with sophisticated profiles of most computer users.  The tech companies have created and deployed surveillance capacities that the Kremlin and FBI…. ” 

·       Rebecca: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.  When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able influence the outcome” 

Back to my words,  lets look at what we just witnessed in Facebook and Twitter regarding the New York Post on Hunter Biden.  Silicon Valley boldly showed their LEFT HAND and BLOCKED the NY Post of an alleged Biden crime.  Whereas we have heard for four years free flowing allegations and popular prosecution of Trump.  These tech companies are doing more than surveillance.  They are shaping popular opinion.  Ironically, this is exactly  what they despise in a Populist leader.   IS this not looking this from both sides.  Engage!!!! 

When you first open the book, read her forward.  Read it twice.  It is full of tightly packed allegory, metaphor-in-reality, poetry-in-prose that will inspire to move on to chapter one.  She closes each chapter with inspirational words that once you close the last page you will make your list of actionable movements you want to start or join.  She does not delve into philanthropy.  You will find with other book reviews on this site where Rebecca or you can pursue your activism. 

In reading this book I find most of Rebecca’s issues are not in alignment with mine.  So WHAT!!!  But the thread on the theme Hope in the Dark asks the reader to look at both sides of issues.  It is not the issue all by itself as it is how the issue sits with you and what action you take.  She defines hope in many ways.  She would say in hope when you personify your position on an issue, you are already successful. 

  I will capture just a couple here in this review.   Read the book and make you own list. 

• ·       After listing a few issues Rebecca says “Hope doesn’t mean denying these realities.  It means facing them and addressing them by remembering what else the twenty-first century has brought including the movements, heroes and shifts in consciousness that address these things now.”
• ·       “it’s important to say what hope is not:  it is not the belief that everything is, or will be fine …..  The hope I am interested is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act.